INVOLUNTARY SIGHTSEEING: SOLDIERS AS TRAVEL WRITERS AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF COLONIAL BURMA

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-407 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Keck
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
British India ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Territorial Claim ◽  
Asian Economy

British Burma has never beenadequately or even systematically studied as both students of modern Burmese history and British empire historians have given it relatively short shrift. Nonetheless, imperial rule lasted for nearly five generations and helped to produce the nation which now identifies itself as Myanmar. By the end of the nineteenth century, Burma was crucial to the wider South Asian economy, supplying oil, minerals, teak, and, above all, rice to destinations around the Indian Ocean. Yet, it took three Anglo-Burmese Wars to make Burma a part of British India. These conflicts are largely forgotten but they determined not only the fate of the country, but helped to shape its future trajectories. Military conflict proved more durable than colonization as independence brought with it a situation in which the “state has been continuously at war with the population mapped into its territorial claim” (Callahan 13). Nonetheless, the intellectual and cultural history of British Burma is rich and fascinating: colonial authors made the country their subject matter and they left behind a diverse corpus which bore the stamp of Victorian civilization. The experience of writing about Burma – particularly by those writers who identified with Burmese culture – produced some forgotten masterpieces. However, the dominant British understanding of the country arose from military conflict and occupation; this paper focuses on four British war narratives (which followed each of the Anglo-Burmese Wars) because they disclose more than their recounting of these conflicts might suggest. By exploring the works of John James Snodgrass, Henry Gouger, William F. B. Laurie, and Major Edmond Charles Browne, it will be possible to trace the beginnings of the colonizing narrative which helped to shape British rule. These writers experienced the Anglo-Burmese Wars directly and their narratives illustrate that they were “involuntary sightseers” recording not only the details of conflict, but their assessments of Burma and the Burmese.

Between Mars and Mammon; the East India Company and Efforts to Reform its Army, 1796–1832

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 385-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Peers
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
British India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Anglo Indian

The history of the East India Company's rule of India is marked by sporadic outbursts of civil-military conflict. It was not unknown in India for European officers to down tools and commit acts that bordered on outright mutiny. Perhaps this could be expected when, on the one hand, the Company, as a commercial body, sought to maximize its profits, while on the other, the army was essentially a mercenary force, ever grasping for a larger slice of the fiscal pie. If, however, we penetrate deeper into the labyrinth of their relations, we find that the issues at stake lose their simplicity. In the early nineteenth century, a third group came into play, further confusing the state of civil-military relations in India. The Anglo-Indian bureaucracy, which had incorporated military attitudes into the operating system of British India, had begun to assert itself. Through such spokesmen as Thomas Munro, John Malcolm, Charles Metcalfe and Mountstuart Elphinstone, an increasingly militarized rule of British India was put forward, angering the court of directors and allowing the officers to mask their private interest under the guise of the national interest. This ideology of militarism, however, must be firmly placed within the context of nineteenth-century British India for it bore little resemblance to those strains of militarism witnessed elsewhere.

Trade, Production, and Incorporation. The Indian Ocean in Flux, 1600–1900

Itinerario ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Tagliacozzo
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Precious Metals ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Regional Histories ◽  
Shed Light

Historians have approached the Indian Ocean from a variety of vantages in their attempts to explain the modern history of this huge maritime arena. Some scholars have concentrated on predation as a linking theme, charting how piracy connected a broad range of actors for centuries in these dangerous waters. Others have focused on environmental issues, asking how patterns of winds, currents, and weather allowed trade to flourish on such a vast, oceanic scale. These latter historians have appropriated a page out of Braudel, and have grafted his approaches to the Mediterranean to fit local, Indian Ocean realities, such as the role of cyclones and mangrove swamps in both helping and hindering long-distance commerce. Still other scholars have used different tacks, following trails of commodities such as spices or precious metals, or even focusing on far-flung archaeological remains, in an attempt to piece together trans-regional histories from the detritus civilisations left behind. All of these epistemological vectors have shed light on the region as a whole, though through different tools and lenses, and via a variety of techniques of inquiry.

scholarly journals Postcolonial penality: Liberty and repression in the shadow of independence, India c. 1947

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Brown
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Archival Data ◽  
British India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Charter Of Fundamental Rights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Administrative Rules

This article reports primary archival data on the colonial penal history of British India and its reconfiguration into the postcolonial Indian state. It introduces criminologists to frameworks through which postcolonial scholars have sought to make sense of the continuities and discontinuities of rule across the colonial/postcolonial divide. The article examines the postcolonial life of one example of colonial penal power, known as the criminal tribes policy, under which more than three million Indian subjects of British rule were restricted in their movements, subject to a host of administrative rules and sometimes severe punishments, sequestered in settlements and limited in access to legal redress. It illustrates how at the birth of the postcolonial Indian state, encompassing visions of a liberal, unfettered and free life guaranteed in a new Constitution and charter of Fundamental Rights, freedom for some was to prove as elusive as citizens as it had been as subjects.

scholarly journals THE PAKISTAN MOVEMENT AND FEDERALISM

2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (02) ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Saeed Ahmed Rid ◽  
Keyword(s):  
British India ◽  
The West ◽  
Consociational Democracy ◽  
Modern Education ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Majoritarian Democracy ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Unitary Model ◽  
History Of ◽  
Partition Of India

The careful reading of the history of Pakistan movement tells us the movement rose in response to the fear of the imposition of majoritarian- unitary democracy model in British India following the West Minister model. After 1857 war of independence, Sir Sayed Ahmed Khan had advised Muslims not to take part in politics and focus their energies on acquiring modern education and hence securing their due share in bureaucratic positions under the British rule. But when Congress was formed in 1885 and gradually democratic reforms were introduced, the fear of majoritarian-unitary model started creeping in among the Muslim elite. The leaders of Muslim League felt if the Westminster style majoritarian- unitary democracy model is introduced in British India that will ultimately bring over the centralized Congress rule in British India which they equated as the Hindu raj. The debate around the federal question remained on top of the agenda in British India since the announcement of the Nehru report in 1928. The failure of the Congress in addressing Muslim concerns regarding majoritarian- unitary democracy model ultimately led to the partition of India in 1947. In this paper the debate around the federal question and the demands for consociational democracy in Pakistan movement would be studied in detail and it will be analysed how far the failure of addressing the federal question was responsible for the partition of India. Keywords: Majoritarian Democracy, Indo-Pak History, Consociationalism, All India Muslim League, Muslim Separatism

Muslim Separatism in Post-Revolt India: A British Game of Divide et Impera?

2014 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Belkacem Belmekki
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
British India ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
The Many

The emergence of a separatist tendency among the majority of the Muslim community in British India in the wake of the happenings of 1857 has been a bone of contention among scholars concerned with the history of the Indian Subcontinent. In this regard, various theories and explanations have been put forward. While some claim that this separatism was in fact a ploy used by the elite of the Muslim community to safeguard their interests, others consider the fear of the overwhelming Hindu majority as a bona fide factor that triggered alienation with the latter, and still others evoke the many religious cum cultural divergences that exist between the Muslims and Hindus. Nevertheless, the present article seeks to set out another element of equal importance, namely British rule, whose role was to a large extent instrumental in polarizing the Indian society, dividing it into two main separate communities, Muslim and Hindu.

The N.E. Monsoon and some Aspects of African History

1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-267
Author(s):  
William Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
African History ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Ocean Region ◽  
History Of ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Environmental Element

Of geographical necessity the external culture contacts of Africa have been mainly by sea, and consequently in order to explain the areal differentiations apparent in the cultural history of the continent it would seem necessary to supplement research on the landward traditions of African societies by investigations into the cultural patterns of sea regions embracing the oceanic faces of the continent. In the macro-regional structure of Africa it is possible to recognize entities such as Mediterranean Africa, Atlantic Africa, and Indian Ocean Africa, which possess distinctive personalities that cannot be entirely understood by landward reference but find their true provenance in the cultural dynamics of wider maritime theatres of action. Thus many of the keys to the cultural history and character of the eastern face of Africa must be sought not in Africa itself but in the changing patterns of the Indian Ocean region of which this African zone forms an integral part. As a student of the historical geography of the Indian Ocean, I am concerned here with but one environmental element in the structure of this region and its significance to some aspects of pre-colonial African history.

Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, 1860–93

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Forbes Munro
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Western India ◽  
Foreign Competition ◽  
British India ◽  
Public Funds ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Persian Gulf

This article reassesses Sir William Mackinnon's role in the evolution of Victorian imperialism in Eastern Africa. It rejects the view that Mackinnon's activities in Eastern Africa were motivated by a desire for self-glorification and attempts, by contrast, to demonstrate the relevance of business considerations. A search for shipping subsidies and railway guarantees, spreading out from British India, accompanied the Mackinnon Group's development of steamshipping and mercantile interests in Africa, in support of investments in the Persian Gulf and western India. Promotion of these interests drew Mackinnon into schemes to lease the Sultan of Zanzibar's mainland territories and to consolidate British rule in the Transvaal by the construction of a railway from Delagoa Bay. During the 1880s the Group's shipping and commercial operations were threatened by the rise of foreign competition. Behind the formation of the Imperial British East Africa Company lay the hopes of Mackinnon and his business associates that public funds could be attracted to the defence of the Group's interests in Eastern Africa and to the reconstruction of its shipping services in the western Indian Ocean.

Between Local and Colonial Perceptions: The History of Slum Clearances in Lagos (Nigeria), 1924-1960

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liora Bigon
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Government ◽  
Colonial Settlement

AbstractFollowing the establishment of the British rule in Lagos in the mid-19th century, the pre-colonial settlement became most central in West Africa, economically and administratively. Yet, scarce resources at the disposal of the colonial government and its exploitive nature prevented any serious remedy for the increasingly pressing residential needs. This article examines slum clearances in Lagos from the early 20th century until the de-colonization era in Nigeria (the 1950s), from a perspective of cultural history. This perspective reveals the width of the conceptual gaps between the colonizers and the colonized, and the chronic mutual misunderstanding regarding the nature of slums and the appropriate ways to eliminate them. Tracing the indigenous perceptions and reactions concerning slum clearance shows that the colonial situation was far from being an overwhelmingly hegemonic one.

scholarly journals Usage of Urdu as the Language of Elitism among the Muslims of the Northern and the Deccan parts of India: A Socio-Cultural Review

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-115
Author(s):  
Arshi Siddiqui ◽  
Ismail Siddiqui
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
High Status ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The North ◽  
British Rule ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose: The paper examines how Urdu evolved from the language of the rulers to the lingua franca of Muslims in the modern times. The paper attempts to highlight how Urdu is still being used as an identity marker for Muslims with respect to the other communities and is a source of ascendancy, an achieved elitist status within the Muslims of the North and Deccan. Approach/Methodology/Design: Socio-cultural analysis. Findings: The usage of Urdu as a political instrument by the Muslim League and the cultural influence the language has exerted on the Muslim community led to its usage as a source of elitism within the community in the modern times. The analysis indicates that there is harking back to the highly Persianised, nastaliq form of Urdu, which was manifested in its literature in the twentieth century as the pure, hegemonic and the aspired language, true to the identity of the community.  The language was characterized by its emergence as a monolithic, distinctive medium, overcoming the different varieties and registers during the British rule through the Hindi-Urdu controversy. Practical Implications: This review study situates Urdu in a socio-cultural context, reflecting   the historical status of the language in India. Originality/value: Urdu has been recognized as a language of a particular community i.e. Muslims in the Indian subcontinent, especially those in the Northern and the Deccan parts of the independent India. This review article, through the use of literature review and content analysis, shows that Urdu is used as a language by Muslims in a way that denotes their high status within the community, due to a variety of factors embedded in the socio-cultural history of the community in the Indian subcontinent.

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